What if we did contact another intelligent life form in the universe? What should we say? What traits best represent our humanity? Douglas Vakoch, the SETI Institute’s Director of Interstellar Message Composition, is working with scientists, artists, linguists, composers, and others to imagine how to speak for our planet.

SETI is a scientific effort seeking to determine if there is intelligent life outside Earth. We were at Aricebo Radio Observatory in March 2003 when scientists listened to the most promising transmissions from UC Berkeley’s SETI@home search. Join the Exploratorium’s Ron Hipschman and special guest Dan Werthimer, chief scientist and principal investigator for the SETI Institute’s efforts, including Arecibo Observatory’s search of artificial radio signals coming from other stars.

How can a mathematical equation frame the question of life in the universe? We’ll talk with Frank Drake, one of the founders of the SETI Institute, about his famous equation and how it frames the search for signs of intelligent life in the universe.

In this archived program from 2003, join us for a conversation with Pulitzer-prize winning biologist E. O. Wilson, who introduced the term biodiversity to describe the interlocking dependence and diversity of organisms in sustaining life in biological communities.

Dr. Jan Witkowski, Executive Director of the Banbury Center of Cold Spring Harbor, talks with us about the purpose of scientific meetings, about science as a social endeavor, and about some of the interesting people, events, and science stories that we can look forward to during the Biology of DNA meeting, which he coorganized with Dr. David Stewart, Director of Meetings and Courses at CSHL.

Webcasts made possible through the generosity of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Jim Clark Endowment for Internet Education, the McBean Family Foundation.

Bandwidth and infrastructure support for connectivity to the California Research and Education Network and to other Internet2-connected networks provided by the Corporation for Educational Networks Initiatives in California (CENIC).